Blog #6

Blog #6

Nick Mitterando

The first reading talks about how Carnegie became a partner of Keystone Bridge Company. It opens by talking a bit about Carnegies other partnerships and how he continually made money off his dividends. The Keystone Bridge Company wanted to use Carnegies steel lot make new and better bridges. These would replace the fragile wood one they currently use.  Carnegie held a 1/5 share. The company did well during the civil war and did even better after it.

            The second reading is about Henry Demarest exposing the Standard Oil Company. It starts out by talking about the nations extreme use of kerosene. He then goes on to say how the oil prices and the entire production and selling line is controlled by one company. The standard Oil Co. refines 9/10 of the oil in the world and controls the same amount in some way. Standard also owned many of the railroads in the US. This allowed them to charge almost anything they wanted for use of the railroads and access to New York harbor. He later goes more in depth of how much each family in the US is paying the Oil company and how much money the Standard really has. He ends by comparing the Pennsylvania oil basin to one in Germany and explains how partnership between oil companies and railroads would not be possible over there.

            The final reading talks about Teddy Roosevelts 1901 speech. HE opens by speaking on how our current laws are not enough to regulate the big corporations anymore. He said that they were enough at one time but are now simply too outdated to keep people safe and fair. He later talks about how the big trusts need to be more closely supervised in order to keep them fairly and ethical. He claims that I the interest of the public the government should be able to supervise and work with these big companies. He ends by saying how when the constitution was adopted no one could see these big changes coming and that times change and so should laws.